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On the Beach, on the Cheap, in Mozambique

The view from Baia Sonâmbula in Tofo, Mozambique, where one night of lodging went for $62.Credit
Seth Kugel

An hour up the sand from the little beach town of Tofo, perched on a peninsula jutting off the southern coast of Mozambique on a bay of gently surfable Indian Ocean waves, I met five children who had never heard of pizza.

We were the only six people in that stretch of beach — five black children in the water chattering in Bitonga, and one ghastly white, sunscreen-covered body walking along the sand under a relentless midday African sun.

“Hello! How are you?” called out one in English, a 13-year-old girl who would turn out to be the most gregarious of the bunch.

We exchanged pleasantries in the standard script of a young student of a foreign language. When they realized I spoke Portuguese, Mozambique’s official language, things got more interesting: they asked me to take photos of them, then to see whatever photos from “your country” were stored in my phone.

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A child holds up a crab in the water near Conguiana.Credit
Seth Kugel

Snow in New York didn’t faze them; they easily identified a hippo in a picture I had taken days before in South Africa (although the youngest thought it was a goat). Then a pepperoni pizza popped up; I asked if they knew what it was.

I’m admittedly cynical on cultural globalization — I’ve spotted Doritos in small towns in the Amazon — but children with no concept of pizza, just down from a beach town where Peace Corps volunteers, scuba fanatics and South African families vacation? The world can still surprise you.

The exchange captured what was so appealing about Tofo (pronounced more like tofu). I cannot bear to be shuttled to a beach resort to lie in the sun for a few days — all the more so if I’m as far away as Mozambique, a country I added to my swing through southern Africa specifically because it was not well known to American travelers. Tofo, though, is relatively undeveloped and inexpensive — and, as my conversation with those locals indicated, still very traditionally African. Rough sand roads, never far from the beach, are host to a mix of African- and expat-run businesses and local fishermen hawking their catch every morning door to door.

My four-day plan to drive up the coast, seeking out smaller, emptier beaches, was scuttled when I got a rental car quote of $80 per day. (I had hoped to keep my entire daily budget well below that.) So in Maputo, the capital, I hopped a chapa — a rickety, cramped minibus — for an eight-hour anything-but-nonstop ride to Inhambane, a city near Tofo. It cost 700 meticais, or $21.23 at 33 meticais to the dollar each way.

The bus was hot, and the music was loud (particularly unpleasant given the 5 a.m. departure time), but that was expected. What was not was that across the aisle, an obviously mentally ill man spent the trip grimacing, screaming and cursing; between me and him sat his elderly father, who rapped him on the head with a cane.

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A family home in Conguiana.Credit
Seth Kugel

I soon realized he had been barbarically restrained for the ride: ankles lashed together with rope, wrists tied behind his back. I knew such measures weren’t unusual in places where mental health care barely exists, but had never seen it up close.

More extraordinary, though, was how everyone on board reacted. The other passengers showed only patience, and the fare collector, Maurício, between hamming it up with other passengers, took on the role of lay psychologist. He joked with the tied-up man and play-argued, always smiling, and when the man strained so hard against his constraints that his pants came down, Maurício literally straddled him, pulled his pants up and tried calm him down.

After arriving in Tofo, I divided my lodging as I divide my travel personality. For my 40-something adult side, I chose one night for $62 in Baia Sonâmbula, a friendly guesthouse with a loungey deck overlooking the sand; breakfast was mostly homemade, from muffins to marmalades, yogurt to peanut butter. (Peanuts are a local crop.) For my overgrown backpacker side, I spent two nights at Mozambeat Motel, an upscale hostel with boxy and poorly lit but spacious and slightly stylish private cabins for $40. It also offered a gorgeous pool area, where I took late-night swims and chatted with Norwegians, South Africans, Californians, one Brooklyn resident and whoever else was passing through.

Baia Sonâmbula was right on the beach near the town’s center, a central market of stalls featuring African artwork and more-kitschy souvenirs. From there, restaurants, dive shops and small homes radiated out; the Mozambeat, about a 15-minute walk, was about as far as anything got from town.

Many restaurants serving seafood at prices and freshness levels not conceivable at home — 200 meticais (under $7) seemed the going rate for fresh seafood if you didn’t want anything too fancy. That’s what I paid for three dinners in a row: a plate of shrimp at Sabores Caseiros, a new and somewhat romantic spot under a thatched roof on the road out of town; two small grilled lobsters at a no-name shack by the water; and best of all, shellfish in matapa, a local creamy stew of peanuts, coconut milk and cassava leaves at Tofo Tofo at the edge of town. (There was also plenty of Thai food and burgers and pasta, which I imagine become more popular the longer you stay.)

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A building once used in the slave trade in Inhambane.Credit
Seth Kugel

With a 1,500-mile coastline, the second-longest on the African continent after Somalia, Mozambique has a lot of beach towns to choose from, but Tofo has another attraction: it’s a 20-metical, 45-minute chapa ride to Inhambane, a lazy but historically interesting port town: the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama stopped here while rounding Africa; and it was involved in the Indian Ocean slave trade long before European colonialists started exporting Mozambican slaves. Its mixed Muslim-Christian-Hindu population is the legacy of that history.

There are two ways to make the excursion — either as a trip organized by outfitters in Tofo, or, solo, arming yourself with a good guidebook and map. I opted for neither, arriving with no plan and no idea where anything was — which gave me no right at all to have a good time.

But I got lucky, eventually finding my way to the public library, where, past a display of the history of Mozambican postage stamps, I met Dorte Eduardo Gueze, a young man in a “Government of Inhambane” polo shirt. I asked what there was to see in town, and without any ado he told me to follow him out the back door of the library, past a statue of Vasco da Gama and a rusted old car that he said was the first ever to reach Inhambane. Then he proceeded to lead me around town for something like three hours. Dorte wasn’t looking for money and had no idea I was writing an article — he just thought it sounded like a fun thing to do.

It was. We ambled from one landmark to another, including a variety of religious venues — a crumbling, colonial-era Catholic church, two very attractive whitewashed mosques, the Hindu “church,” as he called it — as well as a cultural center, where we admired a room of locally produced art, and the old cinema, still in use. Particularly striking were the ruins of waterfront buildings where slaves were held before being shipped out; the walls were crumbling, but the bars in the windows and the locks on the gates were still holding fast. Somewhere else, this would be a museum. I had to force him to take some money for his time.

I spent a total of $275 on my four-day, three-night Tofo trip, and it proved a good mix of relaxed beach time, marmalade and shrimp consumption, history and exploration. But the way back was even better. My original goal had been to reach Barra, the community at the tip of the peninsula, and take a chapa back to Tofo. But after the children told me they lived over the dunes, I walked another half-mile or so up the peninsula, tempted to try to cut across to the road that led back down its spine. On the map it looked to be less than a mile away.

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Manito, left, and Dulce lead the author to the main road between Barra and Tofo.Credit
Seth Kugel

It turned out to be more challenging; in fact, just finding a way over the dunes to the flat land below was hard — I was met a few times by overgrown, steep valleys but finally found a steep but passable path down to the area I would later learn was the community of Conguiana. Below, the path split and curved and disappeared; it was all palm trees, cassava fields and, walking farther, the occasional cluster of rectangular homes with thatched or metal roofs and reed siding and no electricity. Also: no people.

Eventually I spotted a family, including three women under a shade tree, one doing another’s hair and another caring for the children. I called out from afar, so as not to startle them, and they waved me over, asked me to take pictures and gamely answered my question about why there were thousands of shells piled up around the tree’s trunk. “It’s to make the foundation of a house,” said one of the men who joined us, Luis Ernesto. He spoke to the women in Bitonga, and told me they would send two of the children to lead me to the road, if I’d give the kids 20 meticais.

Then, in a moment that would have seemed surreal to American parents, they sent a girl and a boy, Dulce and Manito, maybe ages 8 and 6, off with a stranger through the woods to the road.

It took about 30 minutes to reach the main road — I would never have found it on my own. I gave them their money (50 meticais instead of 20, still less than $2). As I waited for the chapa to Tofo, I chatted with three men sitting at a table drinking a snow-white drink.

“Do you know what this is?” one said. Much like the kids I had met on the beach who had been unable to identify New York pizza, I did not recognize Mozambican coconut beer.

The difference, of course, was that the kids couldn’t eat the pizza photo; whereas I sure could have a few glasses of beer while I waited for the bus.